The Effects of America's Three Affirmative Action Programs on Academic Performance.

I was pulling citations about performative aspects of racial identity when I ran across this article. Here’s the abstract:

Although affirmative action programs for minority students form just one of several criteria for preferential admissions to American colleges and universities, little research has compared the impact of other large “affirmative, actions” programs such as those for athletes and legacies. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey, of Freshmen (NLSF), a sample of nearly 4,000 students in 28 elite American colleges and universities, we develop model that test claims about the effects of affirmative action–namely mismatch hypothesis and stereotypethreat–on college performance in three groups: minorities, athletes, and legacies. First, we estimate models predicting two direr and indirect effects suggested by stereotypethreat: hours studied per week and the degree of psychological performance burden reported by students. Next we include these direct and indirect measures of stereotypethreat and the mismatch hypothesis on grades earned through the end of sophomore year and the likelihood of leaving school by spring of junior year. We do not find strong evidence for the mismatch hypothesis as applied to minorities and athletes, although legacies who enjoyed a greater admissions bonus earned lower grades. Minorities attending institutions that practice greater affirmative action were less likely to drop out but did report lower grades. We also find that legacies and athletes who attend a school that practices institutional affirmative action are indeed more likely to drop out of school.

The article was written by Douglas Massey and Margarita Rooney and appeared in the February 2007 issue of Social Forces.

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2 Comments

Submariner
on May 7, 2007 at 12:13 am

Dr. Spence, you’re going to have to school me on this subject. Can you provide a link to the article? I first came across this phrase, stereotype threat, while reading Claude Steele’s response in Who’s Qualified? by Lani Guinier and Susan Sturm. He described it as the anxiety a person feels about being in a test situation in which a poor performance confirms a negative stereotype about a group in which one belongs. He used it to explain achievement gaps that exist when comparing highly qualified black and white students and its role in causing talented black kids to disconnect from the classroom. He also showed that by substituting simple words like ‘problem solving ‘ for ‘aptitude’ then these gaps were eliminated.
The truth is that tests are obstacles that folks outside the halls of power must navigate in order to be seen as legitimate. If you are a white male with a hook-up then it doesn’t matter. For example, G.W. Bush proudly proclaims that he was a C student at Yale. And Jerome Karabel’s book The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton recounts how Dick Chaney used privileged access to gain entry to Yale and failed out after his first year. Yet dude still ended up being a major player and is the most powerful Vice President in history. We need a reform movement that challenges the idea that pencil and paper, one shot, winner takes all, high stakes tests are valid measures of merit and an efficient way of selecting the best candidates for elite schools and jobs.

Lester Spence
on May 8, 2007 at 6:44 am

I think you are absolutely right, but it is going to be tough…not just because there are a variety of institutions that support the status quo. How can we best sift through the literally tens of thousands of applications that schools get on the regular without some type of exam?